Comments on: Who’s to Blame for My Failures?http://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/
Financial talk for the rest of usTue, 14 Oct 2014 16:18:02 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0By: Rikihttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944914
Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:40:16 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944914I think there’s real difference between “taking responsibility for your own actions” and “blaming yourself for failure” . . . similiar, yes, but not the same and each idea sets a very different tone. I’m all for taking responsibility but definitely not ok with blame.

I don’t think blame is useful.

]]>By: Jonathanhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944825
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:34:43 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944825@Katie (#8) – You have a valid point. I can’t speak for Trent or know for sure what he meant, therefore it wasn’t fair for me to say that your comment was a misconception. I can say that based on what I mean when I speak of personal responsibility, and from what I’ve read and discussed with others, the idea that proponents of personal responsibility do not advocate for change is a common misconception.
]]>By: Jonathanhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944823
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:31:04 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944823@Laura G (#27) – In the example you provided, I think that taking complete responsibility for you being miserable on the trip is reasonable. I do not, however, feel that you should feel responsible for the others. Assuming they are all adults, they should take responsibility for their own actions. They chose to accompany you, they chose to stay up late the night before, they chose to do activities at the park that required standing in long lines, etc.

Taking full responsibility for your own actions is great. Feeling like you’re to blame because others did not have a good time, however, is not good, in my opinion.

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Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:27:33 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944822@QuiteLight (#23) – “I think the real challenge (at least for me) is to assign responsibility appropriately for a problem. If a friend behaves badly towards me, I need to figure out how much responsiblity I have, & how much belongs to them. Did I behave badly first? Or is this a result of their own issues? I can take responsibility for any poor behaviour on my part. I can learn about how to do something differently in the future.

For the stuff that belongs to them, I still have once piece of responsibility; how I am going to deal with this behaviour in the future? If someone is behaving badly (friend, politician, whoever), I need to decide where my boundaries are & what kind of action I’m going to take. That’s my responsibility. I can’t control them. I can control myself. Well, as much as anyone can! ;)”

In my opinion, taking full responsibility means not trying to place blame on the friend in this situation. If I am unhappy with how a friend is behaving towards me it is easy to blame the friend. As you suggested, however, I should ask myself, what did I do to cause this behavior? I need to take it farther, however, and ask myself why this behavior bothers me. I can choose to not let it bother me, or if it the type of behavior I cannot tolerate then I must choose whether to remain friends with the person. If I choose to remain friends with him/her, then any negative feelings I have when they behave this way in the future if 100% on me, since I am unwilling/unable to change my perception of the behavior, yet am also unwilling to end the friendship.

]]>By: Leisureguyhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944786
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:55:33 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944786Stephen Coveny in Seven Habits of Highly Successful People talks about locating the sphere of one’s control and understanding what’s within your control and what is not, and then to focus your efforts and attention on what is within your sphere of control. It’s a useful approach, and he provides many examples.
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Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:52:55 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944785Taking responsibility for yourself does not equal accepting other people’s bad behavior. In fact, your responsible, positive behavior can and will affect others and may inspire them to do better.
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Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:35:33 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944779I just want to know what works in keeping this from going too far in the other direction. A slightly silly but illustrative example:

Several years ago, I won some free passes to an amusement park. I organized some friends for a weekend of hanging out, including a day at the park.

We overslept the day of the park due to a mutual agreement to stay up too late the night before. The lines were incredibly long, the weather was incredibly hot, and everyone was miserable.

I felt I was to blame since this trip was, in a sense, *my* baby, so I was responsible for it going well. Ultimately, I know it was a group responsibility for staying up late, and no one’s responsibility that it was so hot out, and part of the “price of admission” of amusement parks that the lines were so long.

In fact, I know that I should receive *at least* as much credit for providing the tickets as I would get blame for things not going well.

But even acknowledging all this, to this day I blame myself for “ruining” this trip. And I don’t think that’s any healthier than shifting the blame elsewhere. So where’s the middle ground?

]]>By: Kathrynhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944774
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:08:09 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944774I’d love to blame my ex-husband for our marital financial problems, but I had to do the same thing Trent has done. Stop blaming other forces and accept responsibility for my (then) present situation. I allowed a lot of stupid things to occur for the sake of marital peace when I should have been standing up for my beliefs. I didn’t trust my own judgment and allowed my ex-husband make some really poor decisions in regard to our money. (The decisions he made that I didn’t know about, I’ll put on him, but even for those, I had a chance to ask questions and chose to close my eyes.)

It’s not about self-flagellation either. It’s about acknowledging and strengthening our power in our own lives. If we learn that it’s all up to us, we can use that information to make good things happen. “How can *I* avoid this problem in the future” is a good question to ask when faced with a situation gone wrong.

This can be a really valuable message if we let it, but some of us will find fault with Trent for not phrasing it better. Oh look there, we’ve done it again.

Whenever one is dissatisfied with something and seeks to change it to make it more satisfying, it generally is important to analyze it to find the causes of the problem. If you don’t know the source of the problem, it’s difficult to solve it effectively and efficiently. I suppose finding the source of the problem is the “blame” thing, but obviously simply finding the source of the problem doesn’t solve it, so in that sense “blame” is not a solution—but finding that source is essential.

A friend pointed out that the point of “root cause analysis” is to continue the analysis until you arrive at something you can do to solve the problem and/or prevent its recurrence. If one stops too soon, then I think that is negative sense of “blame”: being satisfied with finding a problem source that falls within the bailiwick of others. But that is too soon: the analysis should continue until you find what you can do.

Example: a development team finds that users frequently fail to read the instructions on a screen and thus click the wrong option. One cause of the problem is user inattention, and that is certainly the case. OTOH, this is not root cause analysis, because it gives the development team nothing to do. So the analysis continues: given that users are inattentive, how can the screen design be changed so that the error is precluded. That’s the whole point, obviously.

]]>By: Leisureguyhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944772
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:53:38 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944772I highly recommend the book, now out of print but available through secondhand-book sites, Playing the Piano for Pleasure. It’s an excellent guide for the amateur pianist, and it’s well written and enjoyable. The author’s job at the New Yorker required him to interview many professional pianists, and as an amateur he always asked about technical advice for the amateur. Quite a wonderful book for the piano enthusiast.
]]>By: QuiteLighthttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944771
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:39:53 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944771I think the real challenge (at least for me) is to assign responsibility appropriately for a problem. If a friend behaves badly towards me, I need to figure out how much responsiblity I have, & how much belongs to them. Did I behave badly first? Or is this a result of their own issues? I can take responsibility for any poor behaviour on my part. I can learn about how to do something differently in the future.

For the stuff that belongs to them, I still have once piece of responsibility; how I am going to deal with this behaviour in the future? If someone is behaving badly (friend, politician, whoever), I need to decide where my boundaries are & what kind of action I’m going to take. That’s my responsibility. I can’t control them. I can control myself. Well, as much as anyone can! ;)

* if failure to be a better piano player is a true failure. As usual, I think it’s a poor example.

]]>By: Katiehttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944769
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:17:05 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944769Shannon, in my experience, this is one of those things where virtually everyone thinks that they take full responsibility for things, but everyone else has abdicated personal responsibility entirely. You notice nobody has commented on this post saying “That’s right! I have been blaming marketers for my overspending! I should stop that!”
]]>By: Shannonhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944768
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:12:19 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944768Geesh, is this my problem? I ALWAYS blame myself (or as one commenter said, i take full responsibility for my actions). I’ve long suspected that my thought processes were different from others and now I have confirmation why people are the way they are and there is a me, me, me attitude because it’s always somebody else’s fault. Recycling, consuming less, spending less than I earn; it’s all about personal responsibility and it seems our country has a long way to go if this post is a revelation. Sorry for the negative tone; lack of sleep. :-)
]]>By: Hunterhttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944765
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:48:43 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944765I think a lot of coaches, or leaders of any stripe could plug into this and motivate their crew.

A very strong leader I had the pleasure of working with many years ago gave a similar talk to our team. We had lots on the go, many balls in the air, and results were expected.

The speech was about efforet. He spoke of the college try. “Give it the goold old college try”. He tore that phrase apart and threw it back at us. Hi argument was that only losers say this. It’s their cruch, their losers limp.

Because taking ownership of our failures empowers us to recognize that we’re responsible for our own successes. Life is a 6-billion-person free-for-all fight to the death, and nobody out there is going to put you before themselves. You can sit in a corner and cry and be miserable and jealous, or you can stand up and take what you want out of life. Life isn’t fair, and blaming others for your own unhappiness doesn’t do anything to change that. It just wastes time.

]]>By: getagriphttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944762
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:01:24 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944762I’m not sure I like the term blaming. I prefer responsibility. I believe there is a balance to be had. First off you cannot always control what goes on around you, you can only control your reactions and actions to it. You need to focus on what you can control and accept responsiblity for that. I can’t control the weather, but I can pay attention to the fact a hurricane may hit the region and ensure I’m prepared to hunker down or evacuate. I may just be an employee in a division that’s let go by a company, but I could have paid some attention and already put feelers out for other positions. You can’t control the addict in your life, but you can keep them from laying blame on you for their addiction and accept responsibility in having enabled them.

So yes, we can consider “blaming” ourselves for many things. But the point of blaming shouldn’t be to find fault as much as seek improvement. To me it’s more about recognizing what you can and can’t control, and focusing energy on that.

]]>By: Nicolehttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944752
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:40:24 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944752As a professional musician and an admitted perfectionist, I have to chime in. There have been countless times in my life when I have prepared exceedingly well and then blew it because of nerves or something. There have been other times when I prepared AND performed exceedingly well and still did not get what I wanted. I can assure you, blame is not very helpful.

Trent, the question on my mind is whether your expectations of yourself are reasonable. You don’t mention what your teacher thought of your performance. Learning an instrument is hard at any time, but being an adult beginner can be especially hard for reasons that are very real. Also, it’s actually conterproductive not to take a break now and then — that time helps your brain — so I hope you aren’t beating yourself up for having taken a day off or anything like that.

]]>By: almost therehttp://www.thesimpledollar.com/whos-to-blame-for-my-failures/#comment-944748
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:49:24 +0000http://www.thesimpledollar.com/?p=6923#comment-944748The saying “If it is going to be, it is up to me” comes to mind. Say this to yourself and don’t worry about assigning blame.
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